


Babel Fish

by little_ogre



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, communication shenanigans, good coffee and solid gossip is the hard cash of shatterdomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 16:39:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11924928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_ogre/pseuds/little_ogre
Summary: “ I was in the lab yesterday, asking for the weird one with the tattoos…”“Dr Geiszler,” she supplies with a sigh.“Yeah, whatever. He was out, and the other one, with the cane and the haircut…”“Dr Gottleib,” Mako says, rolling her eyes and ticking something off on her tablet.“…totally called him “cupcake”.”In which Chuck Hansen spreads true misinformation and the Shatterdome rumour mill works overtime.





	Babel Fish

**Author's Note:**

> So I heard Pacific Rim 2 is totally going to happen *blows dust gently off ancient fic from the vaults*.

It is a source of endless annoyance to Hermann that like himself, Newton Geiszler is also German. Oh, Herman might sound more British than the Queen, thanks to his mother and some now quite forgotten bullying for putting as much as a syllable wrong at the posh boarding school his parents sent him to, but he knows he’s Bavarian; and while Newton might say he’s American, he’s really born in Berlin, and he is saturated in that culture, with their _“Love parade”_ , electronica and huge Nostromo-like buildings, crumbling relics from the USSR. He is loud, brash and annoying, just like the city, so it makes perfect sense to dismiss him as “der Berliner”, precisely because it annoys him so much. It makes perfect sense to Hermann anyway.

But, to Hermann it makes perfect sense to refer to maths as “ the handwriting of God” and to cut his own hair in the tiny shatterdome bathrooms using an actual soup bowl and hair clippers, and he has a tendency to forget that the rest of the world does not see things quite the same way.

 

                                                                                                                                       *******

 

“Dad?”

Herc can barely hear Chuck over the blaring alarm, even though he know his boy is practically shouting at him, older that is what it is, he is getting deaf in his old age.  
“Yeah, son?”  
“What’s a “berliner”?”  
“Uh, um,” Hercules Hansen hums in distracted surprise, his hands hovering over the clasps in the suit; he hasn’t heard that word in a while.  
“I think it’s like a doughnut or something?” he says uncertainly, a berliner pfankuche, he remembers the word from an early PPDC conference in Germany, strong black coffee and a puff of powdered sugar and deep fried dough, a whole lifetime ago.  
“A doughnut? “ For some reason this makes Chuck glare at him in sullen disbelief, as if his father would be lying to him about pastry related vernacular.  
“Yeah, you remember them, it’s a sort of a cake, your grandma used to make them, with jam. And sugar.” His wife’s mother might never have liked Herc much, even when times were good, but she had doted on Chuck. The old bag is still something of a sore subject between them, one on a steadily growing list. It feels like every time he talks to Chuck he somehow manages to antagonize him. And now he stands in the middle of a Category II Kaiju alarm and looks upset about pastry.

“Listen, Chuck,” he says “is this really important right now?”  
This is really not the time for discussing antiquated baked goods, Herc makes a helpless gesture meant to encompass the on-going global emergency that is the Kaiju threat and the Jaeger-program.  
Flour has been rationed on the civilian market for years now and such things as muffins, doughnuts and cakes has become a thing of the past. Herc can’t remember the last time he had bread that didn’t taste vaguely of cardboard, and he knows the military still gets the good stuff.

“Nah, not really, just something I heard.” Chuck shrugs indifferently as if to say it’s all the same to him, even though he was the one to bring it up in the first place.  
“OK, good. You ready to suit up then, son?” Herc looks over at Chuck who gives him a look that’s both cocky and belligerent at the same time.  
“I was born ready old man; it’s you who are still in your underpants.”

No respect is what it is. Herc gets no respect these days.

 

*******

 

Chuck walks with Mako along the winding tunnels of the Shatterdome, she is making notes on her tablet, with a little frown on her forehead that says if he could go away, like, right about now, that would be fine. She is too polite to say so of course, but she makes her meaning pretty clear anyway. She really should be nicer to him, because he is an actual pilot and she is still only in the training program, never mind that she is practically building Jaegers on her own.  
“Charles, they’re not together," she says dismissively "I don’t care what you thought you heard, most days we can’t even get them to stay in the same room. The K-science team are definitely not a couple.”  
“ Everybody calls me Chuck, Mako. Charles makes me sounds like a wanker, and yeah, they are, they totally are. I was in the lab yesterday, asking for the weird one with the tattoos…”  
“Dr Geiszler,” she supplies with a sigh.  
“Yeah, whatever. He was out, and the other one, with the cane and the haircut…”  
“Dr Gottleib,” Mako says, rolling her eyes and ticking something off on her tablet.  
“…totally called him “cupcake”.”  
“Cupcake?”  
“Well, he always speaks British and half of the time I don’t even understand what ‘s coming out if his mouth, you’d think it’d kill him to just speak normal for once, and I had to ask dad about it, but totally means cupcake or some shit like that.”  
Mako is actually slowing her step and looking up at him now, her face scrunched in disbelief. It’s totally cute and Chuck feels a tiny surge of triumph that he finally has managed to make her pay attention to him. Mako is always paying attention to important, serious things and never at all to him.  
“Are you telling me, that Dr Gottleib called Dr Geiszler his cupcake? And you heard this?” 

She seems to have trouble wrapping her head around it. The look on her face is actually priceless right now and Chuck sort of wishes he had a camera on him so he could keep it, but at the same time he feels slightly offended on behalf of the K-Science team. She doesn’t have to look that incredulous. Granted, neither one of those two are anybody’s idea of a dreamboat, but stranger things have happened; somebody’s got to love the people who are not made to be obviously attractive. Max is one ugly looking dog and Chuck still loves him. Chuck is not exactly sure what he is getting at here.   
“`S what I said, or he called him a berliner, which is totally a cupcake, or something like it anyway. I asked dad.”

 

*******

 

The doors of the elevator close with a soft ding, cutting off the noise and commotion of the hangar bay. There is an awkward silence, and Herman shifts uncomfortably, trying to take some of the weight off his bad leg. Newt fidgets with his rolled shirt sleeves for about two seconds before looking over at him.

“Did, did Sasha Kaidonovsky just call us…?” he asks thoughtfully, with the air of someone who has been trying to process something but can’t quite manage it. Hermann looks down a little, lips moving soundlessly, before saying:  
“...sweet honey cakes of science?”  
“ Oh good,” Newt sags with relief. “I thought I was hearing things. This place is far out. Are we sure that sharing the neural connection has solved the problem with placing too much strain on the Jaeger pilots brains?”  
Herman sighs and does his best impression of a long suffering, slightly pouty and oddly attractive frog, which as far as Newt can tell is what his face looks like all of the time.  
“ In the case of Sasha and Alexis Kaidonovsky I’m not entirely sure we have solved the problem of sharing a neural connection with vodka. I think they use their Jaeger’s engine to distil their own stuff.” Herman says, his voice completely dry and humourless, much like his shrivelled soul, Newt suspects. If Hermann had any sense of humour Newt would have made him laugh by now. He is hilarious. He is, totally.

*******

 

The door slams shut in Newton’s wake, and an awkward silence descends over the room and six blank faces carefully turn to Herman. The silence holds for a little longer as the papers slowly flutter to the ground and settle. They are all old hands and can remember that time Newton stormed out and then came back in to wordlessly scream at Herman before leaving again. Herman shuffles the paper still on the desk and hates the brittle silence, hates how Newt makes him look this bad professionally, and tries to remember where they had been before this presentation derailed in screaming and shouting. Ah, yes, location of the breach and he stumbles through his part of the presentation. The ranks of scientists are thinning now, soon there will only be himself and Newton left. There are papers on the floor he doesn’t know how to pick up.

Afterward, as the marshals shuffle out, Stacker Pentecost stays behind, picking up the papers from the floor that Herman can’t reach. Pentecost is secretly Herman’s favourite marshal, Coyote Tango the first Jaeger he programmed. He doesn’t _understand_ Herman per se, but but he seems to at least consider both him and Newton fully human and not strange specimens in a jar. The Marshal sighs sounding infinitely weary and puts one arm lightly around Herman’s shoulders, confidential. This is strange and Herman tries not to recoil.

“Dr Gottlieb,” he says,in his deep pleasant voice “ It’s not always easy to work with….familial relationships,” Herman wonders if perhaps he refers to the last time the Marshal denied Ms Mori entry to the Jaeger crew trials and they ended up having an epic shouting match in the hangar bay in front of god and everybody. People brought snacks.  
“So what I’m saying is,” the Marshal harrumphs, clearing his throat, he seems uncomfortable for some reason. “In light of you and Dr Geizlers recent...personal situation, we are going to let it slide, this once. But next month when we are presenting our results to the council you better keep your shit together and you can just keep your personal….ahem, personal.” He pats Herman on the shoulder and gives him a strained smile before walking off.  
Herman just stares after him, baffled.

 *******

 

Newt is trying to hassle the latest recording of a Kaiju/ Jaeger interaction off LOCCENT, because he needs it right now, rather than in a week when the officially release it to staff. It’s not going to be of any use then when they have taken out anything that can be considered sensitive. He is a scientist, how can they expect him to work with incomplete data? This is not an argument LOCCENT seem susceptible to and after a while they just let Tendo Choi gently heard him out of there to his increasingly loud complaints. Newt likes Tendo, he’s a stand up sort of guy who dresses hilariously retro in his own time. And he always has the best coffee; god only knows what unholy hookup he has to get it.  
“So, what’s going on with you and your honey bagel-buddy?” he asks casually, while trying to shoo Newton back into the corridor.

“My what? My who?” Newt is pretty sure Tendo is the only one he knows who even particularly likes bagels, and calling them honey bagel buddies is probably taking it a step too far, even if Newt has a healthy appreciation for Tendo in a bow tie (so sue him, he has eyes, Alison is a lucky girl).

“Dr Gottleib? Tall man, walks with a cane? The latest shatterdome scuttlebutt has it that you now tenderly call each other all sorts of sweet pastry based pet names. We know these things,” Tendo says wagging his head, “ we are not the communications central for nothing up here.”

-We do? Newton asked, nonplussed. This is indeed news. Only yesterday Hermann had called him “ and unbearable pain inflicted upon me in the guise of the death empirical science in an ugly tie”, but there had been no mention of pet names, unless he’d missed it. He had tuned out a bit in the middle to consider the apoplectic hue of pink spreading over Herman’s stupid face and to wonder just how far it went. He still think he might have noticed if Hermann had called him _ein kleine strudel_ in the middle of it. Boy, would he ever have noticed. There would have been some A+ noticing if that had happened.  
Tendo shrugs one shoulder.  
“Well, Alexey told me, that Sasha had told him, that the Wei triplets has it from Mako, says Hermann these days calls you his cupcake.”  
“Mako says this?!”

The shatterdomes gossiped like housewives and generally with the same amount of accuracy, but Mako’s intelligence was always good, if she had had the skinny on somebody she really had it, usually filed in triplicates with corroborating evidence. For one second he actually had to wonder if Hermann had taken to calling him cupcake and he had just not noticed, but no, he would have noticed.  
He’d have to get to the bottom of this.

“I take it that he doesn’t then?”  
“I, what? No, no he absolutely does not,” Newt said and tried to sound neutral but something must have escaped in his voice because Tendo gave him a shrewd look.  
“I see,” Tendo said slowly, giving Newt a look that said he had totally sussed him out, that maybe Herman didn’t call him nicknames but how Newt totally wouldn’t mind if if he did.  
“No! I, ha, of course. I dont care whats it to you anyway?” he blurts and Tendo just raised a knowing eyebrow. Newt was so, so busted.

 

*******

 

Newt can hear the lab door open and close behind him, and the uneven shuffling gait of Herman as he walks across the floor. He would totally look up and say something but he is slightly busy here, up to his elbows in a Kaiju eye that came in yesterday. Its circumference is as large as he can span with his outstretched arms.  
“Newton?” Herman’s tone is oddly hesitant, as if he about to be very angry but has not quite yet figured out why.  
“ Yah, what my man?”  
“I just had a conference with the senior Ranger Hansen in the hallway, and he told me to tell you, that while it never actually takes that much to antagonize his son, sending him an extensive memo on the exact etymology and definition of the word “wiener” would definitely do the job.”  
So maybe all in all it was better if he just sat this one out, being quiet.  
“ Is this one of those cases where its better if I just don’t ask why you are sending young Charles Hansen offensive linguistic memos?”

There is a prolonged silence in which Newt telepathically tries to convey that it would be better for everyone if Hermann in fact did just that.  
“Well,” Herman sniffs, “this sort of thing never happens in theoretical physics, that’s all I’m saying.”

Herman frowns at the back of Newt’s head for a while before shuffling back to his own side of the lab. He thought he might have heard Newt mutter: Sure thing, cupcake, under his breath but surely he must have imagined it. Newt would never say a thing like that.

**Author's Note:**

> For the purpose of this story I actually searched the phrase "Russian bread based pet names" which unfortunately gives scant results in google and is almost certainly not how you do research. This story owes its entire existence to the Eddie Izzard joke about John F Kennedy saying he was a doughnut, true story.  
> (well, obviously not the one about John F Kennedy saying he was a doughnut, as that is a famously un-true story but you know what I mean)


End file.
